NO REGRETS

An appealing romantic story with a real romantic setting. Fifteen-year-old Kate is unhappy when her parents announce that the family will be spending three years in Africa, but the plane has barely landed when she's enchanted with Kenya. Also very soon (this is a romance) her breasts fill out, her hips become rounded, and she turns to mush in kissing sessions with handsome Bruce, a fellow American. ""You just lose yourself in the sensation,"" she explains to Gillian, a fervent convert at the Italian Catholic girls' school she attends--and Gillian replies that prayer makes her feel exactly the same way. By the time Gillian has her vision, fainting in chapel when Christ appears to her, it's apparent to them and to headmistress Mother Theresa that the two girls are much alike--only their passion has different objects. By then Bruce has dropped Kate and Kate has gone on to her real love, the 25-year-old Jean-Claude whom she meets at the home of a French classmate. As JeanClaude explains later, he begins seeing her in order to protect her innocence from the other males; but her impatient ardor gradually wins him over. (By then, she's 16.) With her admission to her less adventurous school friends that ""I love sex,"" and her offhand references to her longstanding indifference to school grades (a conscious decision made in fourth grade), Kate is refreshingly straightforward. And the African background is a vibrant part of the story.